


There's Something Waiting in a Place We Haven't Looked

by parsnips (trifles)



Series: Tales of Love, Loss, and Insurance [28]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alien Invasion, Body Dysphoria, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Disability, Fluff and Angst, Humor, Insurance, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Russian Granny Natasha Romanoff, Weird Plot Shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-07-09 02:34:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19880173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trifles/pseuds/parsnips
Summary: And then: aliens.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the world of [insurance-Bucky](http://triflesandparsnips.tumblr.com/tagged/fic%3Ainsurance%21bucky). These are his stories.

It’s been a while since the last time we checked in with Bucky. Life sometimes gets in the way of convenient storytelling. For instance, when we last saw Steve, he was on his way to do-- something? Definitely something -- with Sergeant Bucky Barnes. We were all, I think, ready for this denouement. In fact, it was so very close to happening that Steve had:

  1. Gotten into the elevator 
  2. Gotten out of the elevator
  3. Swept open the door to Tony’s lab
  4. Left Tony’s lab again when he discovered it was empty, because of course it was, it had been _hours_
  5. Run up six flights of stairs on foot, because he felt _in his heart_ that the elevator had jinxed him
  6. And then crashed through a set of doors onto the rooftop cabana where large swathes of the team were carefully coddling Bucky by giving him their knives to clean--



When aliens attacked.

\--

While the elevator may not have had it personally out for Steve’s love life, the aliens might have. With aliens, who knows.

\--

Let’s look briefly at Bucky, from a moment or so before the attack.

The sun on the cabana was bright, hot, and probably burning his nose. The light flashed irregularly off the knives he was carefully sorting on the table in front of him, briefly blinding him with white, searing light.

In that light, he saw things. Things like kisses. Things like his alternate selves, leaving him. Things like Steve, also, notably, leaving him.

Speech was not something he’d been doing well with for, like, the past hour. The rest of the team had given him an escape and a whet stone, which was pretty decent of them. They were currently sitting a good distance from him, taking over the canopied pool-side chairs and indulging in the soporific heat.

Flash, flash. The light was annoying, particularly since he wasn’t even moving the damned blades anymore. The kiss between his alternate self and the alternate Steve had likewise been annoying. Then _his_ Steve had left the room and-- there was probably a word that meant _annoying_ and _heartbreaking_ and _fucking stupid_ all at once, except he couldn’t remember what it was, and it was sort of making him want to cry--

_Flash._

Wait.

Pattern.

He turned his head, looked at his metal arm, twisted the elbow up. A duller flash, but still there. Out of the corner of his eye, he tracked the angles. It was coming from-- the sky? There was nothing there. Crystal-clear blue, like a certain asshole’s eyes, and the sun, and--

_Flash._

Something in the empty sky was bending light.

It required no thought. The Winter Soldier swept up three of the knives and threw them. They hit, in order: the pillow beside the Widow’s head, the metal of Thor’s hammer, and the fleshy part of Banner’s calf.

Which meant that when the three alien ships wavered into sight, metal-hulled with spider-eyed sensors ringing bulbous protrusions on top, Natasha was already alerted to danger, Thor had grasped Mjolnir, and the Hulk was emerging for a fight.

This, incidentally, was also when Steve decided to fucking cartwheel onto the scene.

\--

All caught up? Good.

\--

Natasha is pretty sure she’s getting too old for this shit.

The pillow’s stuffing flies out as she rips the knife from its landing place beside her cheek. She keeps the momentum, uses it to windmill her entire body off the cabana chair, knife covering her center. The attack had come from the front, where Bucky was--

 _Ding._ Another knife. Hitting-- Thor’s hammer? Natasha twists until she's behind her chair’s canopy, hiding her position. 

_“Ow,”_ says Bruce, and then “Oh _fuck--”_

The chair is going to be insufficient. She scans the rooftop, taking note of the potential cover behind the stupid potted palms, the single exit, the changing register of Bruce’s voice, Clint and Tony finally standing, the smell of ozone in the air, the way time is slowing for her the way it always seems to when her adrenaline is this high, this fast, and that’s when the sky wavers above them and dark metal saucers bloom abruptly in the empty air.

She’s already running when she clocks Steve shoving open the rooftop doors. Good.

The look on his face is not one she’s readily able to interpret at the moment, but it changes fast enough when he sees her, knife in hand and spaceship behind her. She aims for a point just past him and to the side, and jumps toward his throwing arm -- and yes, good, he catches her around the middle, turning to throw her like a vengeful discus at the encroaching aliens.

She lands on the hull, feet slipping a little on the strangely cold metal. There’s a half-sphere, about two-by-one, rising in front of her, ringed with black, shiny sensors -- an immediate target. She turns her knife hand and hits the nearest sensor with the pommel. It cracks, and the ship lurches beneath her like she’d wounded it. She aims for another.

The Hulk roars, and she sees him jump onto one of the other ships, raising his fists to pound the sensor hemisphere. The _zip-ting_ of Iron Man’s shoulder rockets launching at the third ship harmonizes with the clap of Clint’s bowstring, and she feels the wind of an arrow passing beside her to take out a sensor on her ship.

One of the cabana chairs hurls through the air toward the Hulk, who gleefully snatches it and uses it as a melee weapon. Thor flies up next, landing beside her and smashing a blow to the hemisphere, denting it and cracking another two sensors. He doesn’t bother asking if she needs help, but rather immediately jumps onto the ship Tony and Clint had earmarked, taking a swipe at that one too with his hammer, and then jumping on to Hulk’s to do the same. Another chair flies up, just as Hulk destroys the one he has. And then, surprisingly, up flies Bucky, landing heavily beside her.

He’s winded. She suspects he was tossed up here much the way she was. He settles his feet, and then rears back his metal arm to punch down into hull, more pin-pointed than any of their other heavy hitters’ attacks. Natasha smashes the last sensor. Bucky’s fist goes through the hull.

A strange look comes over him. It’s a bad time for strange looks.

The noise around them is unrelenting, but she still hears him croak, “Stop.”

Natasha pauses in her hunt for more things to damage. Bucky’s face looks _very_ strange. He turns to her, wild-eyed, and yells, _“Trap!”_ before everything goes blindingly white and terribly quiet.


	2. Chapter 2

Question 1: What is your height, weight, and date of birth?

Question 2: What are your lifestyle habits, including career, hobbies, and frequency of drugs and alcohol?

Question 3: What do you consider to be the definition of personal wealth, and do you possess any large amounts of it?

Question 4: What will you give us, to be healthy again?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note updated tags.

Steve wakes up. 

He knows he’s awake because Clint is yelling “He’s awake, he’s fucking awake--” next to his goddamn _ear._

It’s not ideal.

“Finally,” says Tony, wheezing slightly from somewhere to Steve’s left. It doesn’t sound good. Did he get hurt during the attack? For that matter, what about the rest of the team? Steve can’t remember much, just looking for more furniture or teammates to throw, Bucky yelling something, and then--

Bucky.

Steve blinks, hard, and finally focuses. Everything looks a little blurred, and the colors of the medical bay in Stark Tower seem off. The sheet covering him feels like it weighs approximately six thousand pounds, and the air is thick. Clint is peering down at him. “Got some bad news for you, Cap,” he says, still much too loud. Steve must make a face, because Clint grimaces, and signs _Sorry_ at him. “My ears don’t work,” he says, and this time it’s almost too quiet. Except Steve usually can hear whispers across a room, so--

Ah. Weaker hearing, weaker vision, some color issues, and... Steve raises his head, just a little, and glances down. Right. It’s not that he can’t feel most of his body. It’s that most of his body isn’t there.

“I remember this,” he says out loud, and sighs.

“Same,” says Tony. He coughs. Steve turns to look, and Tony’s stretched out under a big machine, a tech beside him monitoring a screen and making adjustments. Tony waves his fingers, but doesn’t lift his hand or anything. He looks haggard. “No more hole in my chest, but still got a lot of shrapnel looking for a home. So that’s fun.”

Steve sighs again. “What’s the full damage?”

Natasha says, “It’s not good.” Steve turns the other direction, looking past Clint to-- an older woman, sitting by the door. She’s wearing a set of hospital scrubs that look too big on her, and seem to somehow emphasize the bend of her shoulders, the thickness of her hips. The woman gives a small smile, all wrinkles and dimples, and says, “Surprise” with Natasha’s voice.

She’s still the same size, mostly, but she has to be at least forty years older. Her hair is white, and thinning; the knuckles on her hands are thick with arthritis. She looks as if she’s lived a rough life, and it’s only getting rougher.

“You,” she says, “seem to have had the serum changes removed. You’re who you would be without them, we think. And so am I.”

“Serum?” he says. “You never said.”

“I had my suspicions,” she says, shrugging. It hurts something when she does; her brow lowers, but she doesn’t say anything about it. “Tony’s arc reactor is missing, but the shards aren’t; he’s dying of something nasty when he isn’t in his machine over there. Clint’s mostly the same, but no hearing aids work on him. We think he might be a little more deaf than previously, but it could also be that he’s missing some years’ worth of learned adaptations; we’re not sure. Thor seems to be about at human-level strength and stamina, but he’s still with the doctors doing tests. Bruce is in a coma. There’s brain activity, but we don’t know if it’s his or the Hulk’s or both.”

She pauses. Steve tries hard not to snap at her. For several seconds.

“And Bucky?” he says.

“He’s... a little off,” she says.

“Natasha.”

She rubs her knee, and looks at him squarely. “You’re not going to like it.”

Tony says, “It’s bad, Cap.”

Clint looks around and signs, _What are we talking about?_

Okay. Okay. Steve closes his eyes. The sheet is scratching against his skin with every breath. Every stupid, incredibly hard breath. He opens his eyes again, and ignores how dry they feel. “I need to know,” he says. “Take me to him.”

\--

Clint stays behind with Tony, mostly so they both have someone to talk to, but partly because Tony can’t leave his giant magnet and Clint’s wandering volume levels might not be ideal for the... situation.

That’s what Natasha’s calling it, at the moment. She’s got her arm tucked into Steve’s, because despite his many and varied ailments, he’s still in his early thirties and able to take a punch, and Natasha looks like someone’s tiny osteoporotic Russian grandmother. They’ve gone down to the lower levels, close to the garages, where Hulk’s quiet rooms are. Soft furniture, soft walls, soothing white noise, and pretty colors on the ceiling. It’s where, Natasha says, the _situation_ seems best handled.

There are a variety of cameras aimed in on the place, but only accessible from the observation deck outside the rooms, because Bruce had gotten a sad look on his face and Tony was occasionally a pushover. They stand there now, and watch for a long, long minute.

“Fuck,” Steve says quietly, and Natasha leans her head tiredly against his shoulder.

Bucky is in the room. Or... someone who may have been Bucky, a few hours ago. Whoever it is now... they’re sitting in the corner of the room, eyes darting at shadows. 

And slowly, slowly, trying to twist off their own left arm.


End file.
